Rich McHugh
from Concordance -a work in progress

The night was still undeniably hot and the deep gray humidity cast all the tro-tro bus lights and peddlers before their kerosene-lit tables in a milky glow.  In the distance we could make out the red blinking tower of the airport and, from the thinning row of lights, we could see where the hills ended and the Aburi rainforest began.  In the air were hints of ocean salt and burning cane but we could not escape the small of decaying garbage.
Nat and I slugged our way through the street vendors of Nkrumah circle.  It was two in the morning.  The city of Accra was recklessly alive and on the move.  Market women laughed back and forth and peddlers shouted slogans for their bananas, bars of soap-anything that could be sold-to passengers biding their time in the tro-tro buses, buses that would soon fire and dust down the streets to villages somewhere in the distance.  And the reggae beat overflowed the tin walls of the music bars and forced its way into every dark corridor.  It felt as if a gigantic gong had been struck, and we were standing on it.
We were exhausted and hungry from all the walking.  We sat down before a red-red man, at his wooden table.  The man was bald and slim, and wore an intricate set of scars on his cheek.
 "We'll have,"  Nat said, "two red-red and two wah-tahs."  The man acknowledged and turned his focus back to his pans and bowls of vegetables.
Our seat was such a relief that we laughed, we could've been there till sunrise.
"Oboroni," the man said to me, pointing at my wrist.  "You have good watch."
"Thank you," I said, "thank you very much."
"Hey," Nat hushed her laugh, "have probably never seen  indiglo before."
"I have eight watches for that watch?  Oboroni, very good watches!"
"No thank you, sir," I said.  "It was a gift.  I can't."
"I have ten watches!"  He stood, waiting, as if suddenly a bulb would go on in my head and I"d say, "Ten?  Sure!"  Other men caught wind of our bargaining and angled in over Nat's shoulder.  It made her noticeably antsy.
"No, sir," I said.  "It was a gift and I'm sorry, but thanks."
"Mmmm," the man sucked his cheek.  "She is your wife?"
"Yes," Nat said impatiently.  "Yes I am his wife and yes I gave him that watch and, no, he will not trade it." 
I had known Nat less than seventy-two hours.
"You are medaase kind, thank you," he said and turned back to his pots.  Nat and I sat silent.
"Paul, I had to say something, sorry."
She leaned in closer.
"Look at his cheek," she said.  "Are those tribal?"
"You could ask him."  Another silence.

In the time it took for our food to come, we agreed that we both needed a drink or two.  We ate, tipped the man a few extra Cedis, stretched and made our way to the Kilimanjaro Spot.  Although there was a whirlwind of people dancing inside to reggae, we found it a great comfort to be in a bar.  It was second nature for both of us.  We reconciled ourselves to a corner table, filled ourselves with five beers each, and when by my watch it was near four, we had had enough.
The haze outside had grown into a milky, brooding fog and through it we searched for a taxi.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man running in our direction, then toward us, closer and closer.  I felt a huge hand wrap around my wrist and with a feverish yank on my arm, the man was off through tro-tros and vendors.  My watch was gone.  A woman nearby stood from her pot of boiling peppers and cried frantically, "Kromfo!  Kromfo!  Thief!  Thief!
Kromfo!"
Immediately, tro-tro drivers pushed open their doors, jumped out and with the peddlers and everyone else that poured onto the street, they sped after him.  Nat and I stood petrified and watched forty men run off, yelling and screaming into the Ghanaian night.
"C¹mon, Nat," I urged.  "C'mon."
We jogged between the tro-tros where women and children gazed from windows, we jogged behind shops and vendors and booths, over gutters, into back alleys, and the whole time Nat said, "Did this just happen?  Did this just happen?"
When we stopped for a moment's breath, the shouting horde was not far off.
"C'mon, C'mon," I said and we jogged into a smaller, dimly lit alley and there, panting, stood the impromptu circle.  The posse had grown to sixty; Nat and I slowly crept up.  From behind the rows of shoulders and necks and heads I saw the body that lay feeble in the center.  Three men circled him like hyenas.  The man's white shirt was streaked with dust where the sweat held it, and when they rolled him on his back, what I saw made me cringe.

"What, Paul?  What?  What?"  Nat said.  Luckily, she was too short to see. Nat paced in circles nearby.  I heard the zipperish tear of his shirt, then another.  The man was stunned, curled in a ball.  Then came the sound of boot on bone, twice, and the man wailed.  The kickers circled with eyes focused.  The man lay naked.  The blood on his skull was shiny and trailed from his forehead, from his nose, and from the  white of his mouth.  His hands were clasped, as if in prayer, above his groin.
"Me pa cheow," he pleaded.  "Me pa cheow Me pa cheow Me pa cheow Me pa cheow
Me pa cheow Me pa cheow Me pa cheow."
They would not listen.  So I pleaded with the men.
"Please," I yelled.  "Please don't do this.  Please don't do this.  Please!
I don't care about the watch!  Let the man go!  Please, do not do this."
An elder faced me.
"We must," he said, softly.  "If we do not, the city will be much worse.  We must." His sad eyes assured me of their obligation.
The kicking resumed, and the man never once unclasped his hands.  One kicker, determined, ran three steps and delivered a blow just above the stomach into his ribs.  It was cold and unmistakable, the sound of thick ice cracking under you on a lake.  The man's eyes rolled back, and he wheezed for air.  The horde watched dispassionately.  They'd seen it all before.
The kickers had grown tired and the naked man lay shaking.  Fresh legs emerged from the posse.  Another kick.  In a minute, the man's hands had freed themselves and his eyes floated back and I wondered, hoped, that he was already in some supreme place.
Nat was gasping hard.  I walked over and put my arm on her shoulder.  When a second crack came I felt her wince under me.  I looked back; the men had not seen us leave and, somehow, it seemed better that way.  Nat sobbed into my armpit the whole walk back through the maze of alleys and gutters and tro-tros.  We didn't say a word.
The streets became more vacant and the last of the market women packed into tro-tros and headed home.  Kilimanjaro Spot was quieting and the abandoned tro-tros sat there, doors open, engines still running.  When we passed by the red-red stand, Nat did not look.  She did not see that the man was no longer there and I knew she had not seen, had not connected the events.  I promised myself right then that I would never tell her.
The night dripped slowly into the early hours of the morning.  Over and over   envisioned his doorway, and the soldier who would knock on the door in the morning and the children who would watch their mother cry.
 

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